One of the great things about reflecting out loud is that other people share their own insights and make things even clearer. Here’s what Mel said about my post on week beginnings:

I think I’d like to try weekends as week-beginnings this weekend. It’s treating Saturday and Sunday as time to set up for the week ahead, rather than time to recover from whatever the week did to you – it’s a decision to happen to life rather than let life happen to you. And that’s the way I want my week to be. Proactive rather than reactive.

An appreciation for all the days of the week, instead of slogging through some days in order to get to others

What did I do to prepare for that?

Invested time into learning about project planning and Rational Team Concert so that I can always work with a clear, prioritized task list with time estimates.

Switched to waking up early so that I could have blocks of focused time for personal projects.

Planned social events into my calendar and prioritized social interaction for evenings.

Packed individual lunch portions and stored them in our freezer so that we can be sure of having good food for lunch; cooked dinners during weekends and organized the leftovers in the fridge; switched to using a beltbag instead of a purse so that I’ll always have my keys, badge, and phone in a well-defined place; helped tweak the corridor flow for leaving and entering the house (the big shelves near the front are really useful!).

Planned my week to make sure I have things to look forward to during the week and during the weekend; set things up so that I enjoyed my work; developed things to enjoy outside work as well.

On a bigger scale, the same principle applies. It’s not about escape, it’s about preparation. The two-week staycation W- and I took in August 2009 is a good example. We thought about we wanted life to be like, and we invested time into getting a little bit closer to that vision. We use our long weekends the same way. It’s relaxing and productive. I take breaks so that I can have focused time to step back, reflect, and work on the foundation of my life, the moments of truth, the systems that will pay off a lot over time… and maybe enjoy a new experience or two along the way.

This reflection reminds me of a discussion from my university theology classes: the difference between freedom from and freedom for. Many people think about breaks as freedom from work. I like thinking about them as freedom for awesomeness. =)

Ever since I started my 100-day-blackout from the social networks, I’ve been following this routine:

1) End of the day I have 30-minutes of retrospection time to figure out what I did today, what were good, what were bad, what to correct, what to keep, and what to do tomorrow.
2) Saturday and Sunday are my rest days still. But I use Saturday to tie up loose ends that I had left over the weekend. Saturday would usually be the busiest day of the week because aside from tying up loose ends, it also happens to be my “relaxation day” with Art. Sunday is used to plan the week ahead.

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JohnKitchin Thanks. That matches my current understanding too. It seems like use-package pretty conveniently installs and configures packages. I have seen cask for creating and installing... – Emacs configuration and use-package